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Globalization
In fact, as British political scientist Anthony Giddens writes in his eerily prescient book Runaway World: How Globalism is Reshaping Our Lives, the conflict now underway between the United States and some extremist fundamentalists was inevitable. Cosmopolitans welcome technology and cultural diversity, while fundamentalists find it disturbing and dangerous.
In a globalizing world -- one of its cornerstones being the Net -- technology, information, culture, money, business and imagery are routinely transmitted across the world. Boundaries mean different things now, including the inescapable fact that they are highly porous. This enrages political, social and religious fundamentalists, as we are hurriedly learning. They turn to religion, ethnic identity and nationalism to build "purer" traditions -- and a few turn to violence.
So despite the fact that there's no consensus on exactly what globalism is (my dictionary defines it as the process by which social institutions become adopted on a worldwide scale), the questions torment us: is globalism a force to ease poverty and inequality, by bringing higher standards of living and new technologies to poor and distant regions? Or merely an unprecedented vehicle for promoting the greed, conformity, environmental destruction and profit-at-all-cost ethos of multinational corporations? Perhaps it's both.
Giddens' predictions are coming true before our eyes. The conflict is here, and we seem to be unwilling and unknowing combatants. We, along with our leaders, are astonished at just how much we seem to be hated out there. We see our popular and technological culture despised in much of the world. Fundamentalist extremists have declared a holy war against it, one that may continue for years with bloody and uncertain consequences.
It's not an oversimplification to say that technology is the prime battleground. Technologies from movie cameras to TV sets to the Net are the means by which culture and wealth travel from one part of the world to the other. Fundamentalists have declared war on technology as much as on anything. And from anthrax to passenger jets as missiles, they've shown a sophisticated grasp of how technology can be used to devastating effect against its creators, who revel in making it but not thinking much about it.
In this conflict what Giddens calls "the cosmopolitan approach" is the choice of the people who are reading this column and working in the tech universe. We value free speech, religious freedom, scientific exploration, open communications, cultural choice and diversity. Such tolerance is closely conected to democracy.
Yet democracy and fundamentalism are both spreading world-wide, two seemingly irreconcilable ideologies colliding head-on. As Giddens points out, globalism creates a paradox: democratic cultures are its most enthusiastic proponents, yet globalism doesn't seem to promote democracy so much as corporate profits and practices. In fact, you could argue that globalism seems to expose the limits of democratic structures: Can governments preserve the environment, keep work secure and equitable, ensure fair wages, control capitalism, distribute new technologies equitably, respect diverse cultural values, contain greed and restrict the imagery that Americans love but that frightens and offends large segments of the world population?
In Part Two: Have multinationals hijacked globalism? (Yes.)
This might put things in perspective.
If the lameness filter actually worked, would you even be reading this?
I thought at first I'd skip the Katz article: I'm not exactly a fan of his, but...I broke down and read, primarily for the readership's reaction. Hmmm. Interesting.
How many of you guys have actually thought what it means if we steer away from globalization? Let's say we disentangle. What happens next?
The US says "Screw you guys, I'm going home." Europe decides that untangling itself is a good idea. etc, etc.
That would mean that the world gets poorer, not richer. The sweat shps close: but nothing takes their place. The poor get even poorer. And so do the rich. Or even more so, the rich get even richer.
An example: the US funds a massive amount of money into alternative energy sources as a way to pull out of the Middle East. The revenue that would have continued to flow into the ME dries up. An equal investment in robotics is funded: have machines do what the "sweat shops" in Africa do for clothing. Those close. Develop cheap and very good recycling technologies: the need for a great deal of third world resources goes away. Toss in cheap asteroid mining and that ought to clean the rest up. (very sfnal, yes, but...)
What happens? We see the Have Nots no longer needed. Therefore ignored. Therefore without the capital, they can't make the investments to develop their own systems and then things get poorer...and then...
Seems a lot like damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
. . . however, I *HATE* the fact that I'm classified as a "pacifist" for wanting the Afghan bombing to stop.
I think that this is completely the wrong way to do this - because the Afghan propaganda seems to be much more effective on 1 billion muslims than the US propaganda they've been hearing for the past 20 years. I think that every bomb that drops on Afghanistan is going to be characterized as an attack on islam, a genocide of arabs and persians, and proof of how Evil the US is. Every day, clearly, the US's standing in the coalition is getting worse and worse.
What we must do, is:
Pull out of the UN. Create a new world-organization that does not include nations who support terrorism. All member-states have to have a minimum standard of identifying citizens who want to cross borders, and serious laws against money laundering that are strictly enforced. Security is what people want. Security is the best way to ensure peace, and prosperity. Pull out of Saudi Arabia. Pull out of Israel (since the Israeli government clearly is not interested in peace). Develop alternative energy sources to power the Western economies of the 21st century. Stop all foreign aid and erect trade interdiction to all non-member states.
Let the Arabs starve. Let them know that it's their extremists and their pandering to the extremists that got them into this position, the only way to ensure their own survival and prosperity is to become democratic nations, and join the coalition, and find and eliminate their extremists, and stop sponsoring their propaganda in their schools.
If they want to farm dust, and play in their oil, and lead mideval lives, they're free to do so. But we should completely cease all contact with those societies, and prevent those people from entering Western society so they can no longer terrorize us.
And Israel's problems should be Israel's alone. I, for one, am sick of taking it in the nuts for them. If they want peace, then they have to get rid of their own extremists. Note that all this recent Palestinian violence started when Ariel Sharon came to power. He and his extremist regime are just as nasty as the Jerry Falwells and the Mulluh Omars of the world.
If OBL wants to create a "pure islamist state" and use oil as a weapon to topple the West, I say, let him try, and let him fail on his own.
The muslims of the world will soon find out that 90% of them don't want a pure islamist state, and when the west finds alternative energy sources, then they'll be crying like the oil industry did in the 80's - remember? OPEC cut back on supply, and demand dropped, and they went hungry.
In the end, what we'll have is a bunch of counter-revolutions in the middle east, Arabs who will overthrow these religious regimes, and they'll be much more strongly committed to democracy, because they had to fight to get it, instead of having "the man" impose it on them "against allah's will".
And the world will be a better place, not only because of the better political climate in the mideast, but because the western economies will be using less oil, and the environment may actually allow human life to exist on this planet.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.